


Best Boy

by Thimblerig



Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [3]
Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Additional Information in Author's Note, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Spoilers, Past Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: “You sure you wanna do this?” asked Cris.He sat on the bed next to Raffi, a half metre away, looking at her as diffidently as a hard-bitten Captain of an unlicensed freighter could.“Yeah,” Raffi sighed...
Relationships: Cristóbal Rios & La Sirena's Emergency Medical Hologram, Raffi Musiker & Cristóbal Rios, Raffi Musiker & La Sirena's Emergency Medical Hologram
Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634554
Comments: 48
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> // Contains minor spoilers for 1.05 Stardust City Rag, in that some of Raffi’s motivations are revealed there. And, something like the medical stuff in this fic must have happened offscreen somewhere between 1.03 and 1.05.
> 
> // In terms of this fic series, this takes place between Night Watch and Point of Contact.
> 
> // “best boy” is a particularly colourful term for the second-in-command of a film’s electrical or lighting crew. (The senior member is the “gaffer”.) 
> 
> More on the etymology here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_boy

“You sure you wanna do this?” asked Cris.

He sat on the bed next to Raffi, a half metre away, looking at her as diffidently as a hard-bitten Captain of an unlicensed freighter could.

“Yeah,” Raffi sighed, her fingers working at teasing out the edge of her jacket. She looked at her hands and told them to stop. They didn’t.

“I can stay with you,” he offered, turning his head to stare at the wall. “Read you gloomy philosophy. Offer up my manly bosom. Whatever.”

“Nah,” she said. “You’ve got a ship to run. ‘Sides, I’m an ugly crier. Snot everywhere.”

“I promise to love you however you are,” Cris declared with dramatic insincerity.

Raffi startled into laughter. But, “No,” she said. Already his shoulders were winding tight, that half metre gap infinitesimally increasing. Her friend struggled to carry his own burdens; she wouldn’t make him lift hers, even for a little while. “I’m good.”

“Right then,” he said, slapping his thighs. “Activate EMH.”

“... at seems to be the problem?” his copy said, materialising out of air and light.

“Detox.”

The EMH’s animated face filled with beaming hope, which disappeared immediately as Cris pointed to Raffi. “Oh but sir, I have new studies showi-”

“Let’s all meditate on the meaning of the word ‘functional’,” snapped Cris, “in the phrase _‘functional_ alcoholic’.”

The Hologram’s face smoothed into something resembling blandness. “Right,” Cris said again. He stood up suddenly and, putting his hands on the startled Hologram’s shoulders, moved him to stand in front of Raffi. “This is my best boy, very smart -”

“I care so he doesn’t have to,” the EMH said dryly.

“Oh, hush. He’s gonna look after you all through it.” Cris stared sharply at the EMH. “If someone’s head gets cut off outside this room, you…”

“Call for assistance and freeze the brain for attempted revival later?”

“You _stay with Raffi._ Got it?”

“Got it,” the EMH said faintly, staring at the Captain.

_“Chau.”_

Raffi and the EMH stared at the door rapidly closing behind Cris.

After a beat, the EMH performed clearing his throat, and asked, “Is there a specific substance you are trying to detox from, Ms Musiker?”

“Liquor. And snakeleaf.”

After another beat, the EMH said, “Ah. Well, I can of course give you opioid blockers. And some medical smoothers won’t interfere with the detox process. But snakeleaf -”

“Best to sweat it out. Yeah, got it, Doc.” Raffi yanked out the elastic band that held up her topknot and scrubbed harsh fingers furiously through her riotous hair. “We’re gonna be buddies for a few days.”

When she looked up the EMH was smiling, mostly with his eyes, and holding out one hand. “Partners,” he said.

Raffi scraped her hair off her forehead and took his room-temperature hand. “Partners,” she answered, and gripped hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Chau - this is, apparently, a common way to say goodbye in Chile: https://pepeschile.com/how-to-say-goodbye-in-chile/
> 
> If you’re a Chilean and think I’ve erred, please feel free to let me know. :-)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // So... turns out when I said this was a two-parter I was a dirty, dirty liar. Hope you don't mind!
> 
> // CW: Brief scene dealing with the medical complications of substance withdrawal.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“No.”

The EMH perched in a chair set unobtrusively in a corner. He had a book in his lap, hardcover, clothbound, and pretended to read it as Raffi prowled forwards and back, forwards and back, like an enclosed lioness.

She’d stripped to a singlet and soft cotton shorts. Even so, heat prickled sweat along her arms and legs and pulsed vilely on her neck under the mop of her loosened hair. “Dim the lights. No, that’s too much. No, that’s - argh.” She scrubbed her face with her hands. “What are you reading?”

The EMH smiled, straightened in his chair, and turned a page. _“My poem’s epic...”_ he declared,

_… and is meant to be  
Divided in twelve books; each book containing,  
With love, and war, a heavy gale at sea,  
A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning,  
New characters…_

* * *

“I’m intuitive,” Raffi said later, hunched miserably with her forearms braced on the back of a reversed chair. The EMH parted her sweaty hair with gentle fingers. He sponged the back of her neck with a damp cloth, then parted her hair again, into a multitude of fine strands.

“Not like _psychic-_ intuitive,” she assured him, “just, my pattern-recognition is way off the charts. My big skill, even after I switched to Command-track. Got me a posting with the great Picard, even, hoo-ee were my family ex _cit_ ed.”

She sat in silence as the EMH began to twist her hair into a complicated, schoolgirl braid, loose and ornamental.

“When I’m on a research spiral, going up and up, it’s better than sex. Er, for humans anyway, I don’t want to pre-”

“I might have,” the EMH said primly. “You don’t know.”

“Heh. Fair enough.”

After a time, he switched to the other side of Raffi’s head.

“When I’m crashing,” she said, very low, “it’s almost worse than this.” She pursed her lips. “At first the booze… it was just to smooth things out. And the ‘leaf was to _feel_ something. And…”

“Everything has a cost,” said the EMH.

“Yeah.”

He swung the dresser mirror in front of her. “Acceptable?” he asked.

She eyed the woman in front of her: weary, haggard, and… tended to.

“Yeah. Thanks, Doc.”

* * *

“...mmphck grzw whuzzat?” Raffi opened her eyes muzzily. There was something hard against her back, blissfully cool, but the harsh light in front of her burned. It felt like a spike had been inserted behind her left eyeball. There was a pressure on either side of her face, gentle and inexorable. “Never talk,” she mumbled.

Cris’s face loomed in front of her: upside down, blurry and frowning, blocking the light. “You had a seizure, Ms Musiker,” he told her, in a soft, crisp British accent. “Everything will be alright.

Seizure? Raffi flopped one arm feebly.

“Shh,” said Cris in that poncy voice. “I’m keeping you still through the aftershocks.”

“Thhhanks, Cr’s.”

Cris smiled. “Not Cris,” he corrected softly. “The EMH.”

“Hhn.”

“I’ll get you into bed in half a minute. Lie still.”

“Sstay,” she mumbled. “‘Scool here. Cool is nice.” The pressure of the Hologram’s hands against her head suddenly chilled, and she whimpered in relief. “Thnks.”

Angry voices faded into being, muffled through bulkhead walls, but they and the heavy footsteps were still too loud and Raffi cringed. _“... is not for you, Picard, you have **no right** to interfere with my other passen-”_

_“- been days, I only want to know if she’s al-”_

_“I do not want,”_ said Cris ominously, _“to lay hands on an old ma-”_

**_“Raffi!”_ **

Raffi and the EMH stared at each other, eyes round. She took a deep breath.

“Hey, J-L,” she drawled, loud as she could.

A pause.

_“Are you well, Raffi?”_

“Jussst peachy. Takin’ some meee-time.”

Another pause. Picard’s voice crisped, like a sour green apple in fall. _“I see.”_ A breath. _“Enjoy your… rest. We shall talk later.”_ Footsteps, fading down the corridor.

“Thhhnks ’m on a bennder,” she slurred. The EMH said nothing. Then his eyes widened in alarm.

Lightning took her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // The EMH reads from Canto 1 of _Don Juan,_ by George Gordon, Lord Byron.


	3. Chapter 3

_”... Under the left shoulder, he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham - plain and pale, but intelligent and smi-"_

“Rargh,” said Raffi, huddled under a soft blanket against the chill in the air. “Stop reading. This is boring and you’re boring.”

The EMH, who had been asked to read this exact text, shut his book and sat back with a small, polite smile.

Raffi, in the spirit of many inmates throughout history, procured a ball and bounced it off the ceiling, catching it expertly. Then she began to shiver.

If she hadn't caught a ride on _La Sirena -_ if J-L had never walked back in on her life, she would have been picking a niiice, fresh leaf off the bush about now. She could smell it, feel the touch-memory on her fingers.

“Read me something else,” Raffi said irritably. “Do the - No.” She shut her eyes, opened them, then unwound the blanket and bounced the ball off the ceiling again.

“EMH, read correspondence from Gabriel Hwang, dated Stardate 74122”

The EMH turned a page of his hardbound book. His eyebrows furrowed as he read. “Oh, _no,_ maybe one of the earlier ones?”

“Stardate 74122,” Raffi snapped.

“I really don’t think that -”

“Don’t make me deactivate you.”

The EMH hesitated, sighed, and began.

 _“Raffaela,”_ he began.

_This letter is difficult to write._

_It’s not even the substance abuse, not really? Or the memories of neglect, painful as they are. You came in and out of my life like a storm, bent on your own whims, but there were some good times in there for all of us. I promise you that I remember them._

_I have a wife, now. A kind, brilliant, loving wife. And the things you say about her people, what you would say to her face? I think of them and I want to vomit._

_For the sake of our happiness and for our future children I am cutting off contact._

_I love you. I will always love you. That’s how these things go and I’m at peace with it._

_But don’t write to me again._

_Gabriel_

The EMH’s voice died away. Raffi stared up at the ceiling again.

“We can focus on, _will always love you,_ can’t we?” he said, very hopeful.

“Deactivate EMH,” she said.

He vanished.

Raffi sighed, and hauled herself upright. There was water to drink, somewhere.

The EMH was back in the chair.

“Standing orders,” he said regretfully.

She threw the ball at his head. He shivered away.

* * *

“- really can do this all day,” said the EMH, from his perch, batlike, in a corner of the ceiling.

* * *

“- this is excellent for hand-eye co-ordina-”

* * *

“Mild physical exertion is correlated with positive rehabilitation outcomes. I commend -”

* * *

“Do you really think,” the EMH said, pouring a cup of water from the carafe on the nightstand, “that after Rios’s controlled-release self-destruction I can be deterred by a… bouncing ball?”

Raffi glared at him, panting.

“Shall I read to you again?”

“The one with the faun in the snow,” she said at last, taking the cup. “That Tumnus is a piece of work...”

The EMH smiled as he retrieved his book, licked his forefinger, and turned a page. _“He had a strange, but pleasant little face...”_ he read.

* * *

* * *

It is dark and something venomous crawls under her skin and she is crying, wrapped safe in strong arms. The EMH has warmed himself up for the embrace and she ducks her head into the crook of his neck, leaking tears and snot all down his front. The smell of tobacco and liquor, and faint sweat underneath, is inexpressibly comforting.

“... I destroy everything,” she says, gasping for air. “It’s all my -”

“Shh, shh, _corazon,_ my brave, it will be well. _Duerme_ now, _duerme...”_

* * *

* * *

Nothing lasts forever, not even torment.

It was late when Raffi slunk onto the Operations deck of the freighter, quiet and wary as a wayward cat. She clutched the wafer that held the EMH’s prescription for post-crisis treatment in one hand, held the shadow of his last handshake in the other, and tiptoed forward.

Slow applause sounded.

“Well, well, well.” Cris grinned, slouching villainous and hairy in the Captain’s chair. “Musiker’s back in the land of the living.”

“Eh, shaddup.” Raffi collapsed slowly into the Ops station chair. She felt hammered out, beaten into shining bronze.

“Freecloud’s three days off,” he said, watching the blurry lights in front.

She nodded. Then, “Put that cigar away,” she said, as she drew her hair up into a topknot. “I’m delicate.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // The books that the EMH reads from are _Treasure Island,_ by Robert Louis Stevenson, and _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,_ by C S Lewis. Raffi says “Good gracious,” at some point in 1.05, and it kept reminding me of the Tumnus introduction. And so you must suffer, also.
> 
> // If I didn’t err on the Spanish, the second to last section says: “Shh, shh, _heart,_ my brave, it will be well. _Sleep_ now, _sleep...”_
> 
> And, thank you for reading :-)


End file.
